


Instruments of Destruction

by seiji



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drugs, Gen, John jumps to conclusions, Sherlock's Violin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-04
Updated: 2011-10-04
Packaged: 2017-10-24 07:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seiji/pseuds/seiji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John learns something about delicate instruments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Instruments of Destruction

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Violins: A Guide For The Sherlock Fandom](https://archiveofourown.org/works/211917) by [gelishan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gelishan/pseuds/gelishan). 



He’s misremembered his schedule again. He’s bloody well got to start putting it in his mobile somehow, maybe linking it to his wakeup alarm. Phones can do that now, right? Dr. John Watson fiddles with endless incomprehensible settings on his hand-me-down phone on his morning trudge from the surgery back to the flat, already well awake and freezing on what has turned out to be his Tuesday off.

If Sherlock is finished with whatever it was with the tapeworms and the curry powder in the kitchen sink, maybe he’ll condescend to accompany John to an early lunch. They’re between cases--or were an hour ago--so he has a high probability of getting the man to consume something with real nutritional value.

 _Seventeen Bloody Steps_ , he thinks, in capitals, clomping each one at a measured pace. It’s become something of a gag between the two of them to make a grand production of getting all the way up to the first floor whenever they’re not screaming about after murderers and whatnot. Mrs. Hudson finds it endearing and bakes John’s favourite cinnamon shortbread with twenty percent higher frequency, or so Sherlock says. John encourages it as a way of broadcasting their approaches to each other. He can’t help sensing a blind approach and tensing to meet it, reaching involuntarily for a sidearm he may or may not keep tucked awkwardly under his jumper. Sherlock’s not a soldier, doesn’t seem to have any kind of weapons training since fencing at school, certainly isn’t comfortable handling firearms, but he’s willing to alter his natural feline slink to a stomp if it helps John keep the battlefield out of 221B.

The door is open, as usual. Apparently the curry worms are complete, or marinating, or boring, because Sherlock has transferred last night’s contents of the coffee table into a heap in John’s armchair and laid a spread of violin bits all over a dozen perfect white tea towels. Sherlock is in the precise centre of the sofa with his violin cradled in a nest of more tea towels, looking bizarrely naked with its strings and pegs all in a row before him. The bow is in a similar state, its handle in two pieces and the hair stretched the full length of the table beside a plastic tub of what John wouldn’t bet is water. John’s lips purse.

“It is water,” Sherlock clarifies without looking up. “Clean water, mild soap. The kitchen sink was occupied.” _Obviously_.

John’s in a fair mood and looking forward to second breakfast; he can play this game. After a quick observation of the number of overlapping tea towels required to cover the whole table, he leads with “and why not a bath towel?”

Sherlock, still doing something excruciating with a cotton swab and a hemostat inside the part of the violin where all the pegs ought to be, quirks one corner of his mouth in the way that means _that’s very nearly the_ right _question!_

John still doesn’t understand the rules of this game, but he’s slowly learning how to play. _Fifteen-love_.

“The bath towels are poly-cotton blend terry loops. These are pure pima.” John doesn’t understand this answer, which doesn’t explain where they came from. _Fifteen all_. John does the washing and he knows there aren’t so many tea towels in the flat, let alone so pristine white. Did Sherlock go out in the past hour and buy eighteen brand new towels just to clean his violin, or did he nick these from Mrs. Hudson? Are these what he keeps in the locked drawer of his bureau?

“What about your bedsheets, then? Organic pima, six hundred thread count.” _Thirty-fifteen_.

“ _John!_ ” he cries in a tone of outrage, still not looking up. “They’re _navy!_ Full of _dye!_ And _skin oils_.” John can practically hear the shudder, though he’s privately entertained at the thought of Sherlock admitting in so many words that his body does something as ordinary as _produce oils. Thirty all_.

“The way you torture that poor thing, I’d never expect to see you put so much effort into maintaining it. Is this a BDSM thing? Is the violin your sub? Would you two like to be alone?”

Sherlock’s looking directly at him, finally. “It was a _gift_ ,” he intones in italics. His timbre begs for the privilege of refusing to elaborate. John loves denying that. _Deuce. Or is it advantage Watson?_ Unfortunately he’s now out of clever moves, and his metaphors have got so muddled he’s not sure what game they’re playing anyway.

“Hand me that bottle,” Sherlock says, with no indication to which of the three bottles on the table he is referring. Could be the curry bottle in the kitchen. _Note: disinfect sink again. Note: steal more disinfectant from Bart’s_. John steps over a stack of glossy new paperbacks and another of 19th century German dictionaries to pick up the bottle with the blue cap. _Obviously_. He freezes then, arm half extended. Standing directly over the open violin case, he can see a length of rubber tubing and several little bags of white powder. His eyes flick to the bookcase on the right, by the window, to the exotic red box on the middle shelf. The shelf at John’s eye level. The box that definitely wasn’t there during Lestrade’s drugs bust the night of John’s first case. It silently appeared the next day, John’s first proper day in Baker Street. It’s real morocco, he’s sure of it, and the gilt trim is real gold, and there are thousands of better places in the flat to hide the key than inside the skull on the mantelpiece.

For the first few weeks he checked it obsessively three or four times a day. He knows its contents like the contents of his gun kit. He knows the length of rubber hose and how far it will stretch. He knows exactly how many needles are sealed in sterile pouches tucked into the velvet lining around the syringe. He knows how many little plastic bags are secreted in the false lid and the exact volume of powder in each. He knows the precise colour and consistency of the powder. He’ll know if any of them are swapped out.

He doesn’t recognize the contents of the violin case. This is new.

“Sherlock.” It’s his Army voice. Flat. Apathetic. Sociopathic. Incapable of processing punishment.

Sherlock looks up, takes in the look on John’s face, follows his line of sight into the violin case, flicks his eyelids at the red morocco box. His own face is utterly blank. For twenty seconds they stare at each other. Sherlock answers without drawing breath:

“Rubber worm humidifier. Powdered desiccant.” His eyelids twitch again. “Violins are very delicate instruments. Highly susceptible to damage due to fluctuations in environmental humidity. Such damage is exceedingly difficult and expensive to repair, if not permanent.” There’s been music playing since John stomped in, wafting from tiny but expensive speakers plugged into Sherlock’s computer. _Sherlock’s computer, for once_. It’s not violin music, _obviously_ , but Gregorian chants. The volume is set at the very edge of his hearing. John inhales and pulls his gaze away from Sherlock’s to toss his jacket on top of the heap on top of his chair and continue up to his room.

Two minutes later he’s back at the end of the sofa with a mild frown on his face. “Budge up, then, your bony arse doesn’t need the whole damn sofa. Your violin doesn’t need the whole damn table, either. What've you done to your bow?”

Sherlock’s mouth does something nobody else would call smiling. “The bow’s not moving. I’m done with the water, though. And,” as though in reply to an earlier question, “it’s called a _frog_ , not a handle.” He shifts twelve inches to the left and rearranges the bottles and papers and tweezers and innumerable tiny bits into a line down the centre of the table, clearing most of the right side. John moves the tub of clean soapy water to the floor and sits down beside his flatmate.

“I’ll need to borrow your hands to restring, later.”

“Of course you will.”

His gun and cleaning kit make no noise as he sets them on the tea towels. The music continues to play as the scent of cinnamon drifts into the flat.


End file.
